Death — brutal, horrible death, captured starkly and succinctly — comes at the end of each vignette in A Touch of Sin in the same way that fangs come at the end of a snake: the incisive moment is the business end of a slithering, corrupt, terrifying mass. It would be too much to say that Jia Zhangke is forgiving any of the sinners he depicts in this Cannes-approved portrayal of modern China, but he’s certainly suggesting that the times help make the man.

Pitched between the subdued realism of his earlier work and the visceral thrills of wuxia films, the China of Sin is a slaughterhouse conveyer belt, mechanical, indifferent and unrelenting until the blood starts to hit the floor. Following four different stories — a small-town smooth-talker incensed by corruption, a petty thief only out for himself, a massage parlour receptionist left behind by a lover and a low-wage worker being slowly crushed — it is unified mostly in the hopeless circumstances of each of its subjects.

The receptionist seems the most perfect distillation of the film, beset both by personal disappointment and systematic corruption. She finally turns violent after a local thug demands her company in the parlour — while smacking her in the face with a stack of cash. That scene is an exclamation point where the film is usually a low-talker, but as with most of the bursts of violence, its also a release valve for relentless indignity.

And it’s ultimately that ebb and flow that makes it work so well. Sin understands violence, especially as revenge, better than many of its wuxia counterparts — to say nothing of Hollywood — and besides always locating it near the nadir of money and power, it finds in it a catharsis for both character and viewer. Zhangke makes for a formidable snake charmer. 3 stars